Friday, November 10, 2006

Hell of a way to run an empire.

"This may seem a trivial point now, given what's happened since. But it seems worth remembering that the size of the Democratic wave was hugely influenced at the margin (which is where it counts) by that tenth of the electorate who couldn't make up their minds until literally the last minute -- despite everything that's been done, said, reported and revealed over the two years since they were last asked to take the fate of the world's only superpower into their hands.

Next time, they could easily break the other way, for reasons just as ephemeral.

"As a young man, Gates served on the National Security Council staff under first Brent Scowcroft and then Zbigniew Brzezinski. That is the experience that prepared him for his later role in the Reagan administration.

More recently, Scowcroft and Brzezinski have been central to the clique of geostrategists who are obsessed with Central Asia. They co-chaired the Afghanistan-American Foundation back in the middle 90's. They were on the board of advisors of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (along with Kissinger, Baker, and Cheney). Brzezinski was a co-chair of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. Scowcroft is the head of the American Turkish Council, about which Sibel Edmonds has so much to say. Both were among the Bush Sr. people coming out against the Iraq War in August 2002.

What concerns me is not so much Gates' Iran-Contra and Iraqgate connections in the 80's -- since he seems to be no dirtier than anybody else they might have chosen -- as the fact that he might be assigned to wind down the Iraq War only to plunge us into fresh misadventures in Central Asia, where Russia has recently been taking advantage of the US's preoccupation to extend its influence. That spells nothing but trouble."

* clemons is looking for nominations for Time's Person of the Year. I say sibel - even if that nomination is both too early and too late.